My initial thinking would be either the Democratic Republic of the Congo or maybe one of those Saharan countries like Niger or Chad. I bet their prisons aren't air-conditioned.

The DRC, though, seems like a place where you'd get your food taken from you every day by bigger inmates, and you'd get trenchfoot and stuff.

I'm not sure those places would do any organized torture, though. I doubt they'd have the organizational capacity, or could afford the car batteries, so that's a little plus.

CoMoChief

11-25-2008, 02:23 PM

I'd prob say some Al Queada prison wouldnt be so nice of a vacation.

Maybe thats just me.

luv

11-25-2008, 02:25 PM

Anyplace without a clean bathroom.

KCCHIEFS27

11-25-2008, 02:25 PM

North Korea..

Goapics1

11-25-2008, 02:27 PM

Anyplace without a clean bathroom.

you could say that about my place of employment.

RJ

11-25-2008, 02:31 PM

Maricopa County, Arizona, USA.

Phoenix is no place to have to live outside and I'd look silly in a pink prison jumpsuit.

luv

11-25-2008, 02:32 PM

you could say that about my place of employment.

I feel that way sometimes, but it's because my office has no windows. At least prisons have windows. Oh well. At least we've got clean bathrooms.

burt

11-25-2008, 02:32 PM

Tori Spellings cleavage Canyon.....

Chiefnj2

11-25-2008, 02:34 PM

Rwanda

IF, as Jean-Paul Sartre had it, "Hell is other people", then Gitarama prison must be the most infernal place on earth. It is the most crowded penitentiary in the world, and probably the most horrific. Crammed into a walled space half the size of a football pitch, 7,000 men are detained in conditions which, were they cattle in Europe, would have animal rights activists up in arms.

But this is Rwanda and in the aftermath of last year's genocide, in which at least half a million people died, there is little sympathy for the fate of Hutus charged with their slaughter.

Project Management Standard Program Such is the overcrowding in Gitarama, a prison built for 400 inmates, that each man has only half a square yard of space. The women's quarters offer minimal facilities. In the open courtyard, where the bulk of prisoners languish, most have no choice but to stand day and night. The revelations of a report just published by the aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres are alarming enough in themselves: one in eight prisoners in Gitarama has died during the past nine months.

Among referrals of inmates to a nearby hospital, 38 per cent are suffering from trauma wounds, including burst eardrums and bites caused by other prisoners; and 41 per cent are suffering from rotting feet from standing barefoot on the wet and dirty ground. Many have had toes, feet and legs amputated as a result.

Little, however - not even the swell of human voices nor the lion-house stench enveloping the immediate environs - prepares the visitor for the reality of this prison in central Rwanda. The heaving sea of faces and crush of semi-naked bodies gives little initial hope of penetrating much beyond the iron gate when it is unbarred by a prison warder. Inside a path somehow opens and the visitor is swallowed up. Arms like tendrils reach out to beg the attention of the newcomer; legs covered with suppurating sores are thrust forward in supplication.

Indeed, Gitarama is a grave for many of those who are confined within its high, ochre brick walls. More than 1,000 detainees have died of suffocation, disease and neglect since last September. Four men attempting to escape last month were shot dead and three were wounded.

Except for a hospital building for prisoners suffering from dysentery, Gitarama lacks proper medical facilities. The hospitalhas a capacity of only 25 cases and there are several patients to each befouled mattress. "The conditions here are completely inhumane. It's urgent that they are improved," said Brigitte Troyon of the International Committee of the Red Cross, which is providing medical and other assistance to Rwanda's prisons. "Half a dozen people are dying in Gitarama every day. If an epidemic breaks out there's no knowing how many could die."

There is only one full-time doctor assigned to the prison. He is assisted by eight healthcare workers. With the incidence of skin infections, wounds and malnutrition increasing they are woefully unequal to their terrible task.

All services in the local hospital at Kabgayi are oversubscribed, so men who should be receiving emergency treatment are left to rot in the dank, seething courtyard. Moving through the ragged mass of humanity, one has constantly to avoid stepping on the bare, bloated feet of men forced to stand for interminable hours exposed to the elements. Those too weak to support themselves have slipped to the ground where they squat in filth.

Many foot sores have become gangrenous so that toes have turned black and rotten and fallen off. Advanced septicaemia has coloured some faces a ghastly yellow. Amid the choking smoke of the cooking area, men stir oil drums of beans and maize over open fires to provide the inmates with a single meal per day.

At the extremity of the courtyard is a concrete block which houses the longest-serving prisoners. Its cellar is a rank, reeking Hades into which hundreds of men are packed in complete darkness. The stairs and corridors are filled with inmates who dare not sit down for fear of being crushed.

The lucky ones have managed to stake out a space on the floors of the "dormitories" where they can lie down. But such is the overcrowding that even the latrines (of which there are only 20) are occupied by recumbent figures. As men slumber and defecate side by side, others sluice themselves in the outflow of an open sewer.

With a prison population of more than 48,000 and limited accommodation facilities, thegovernment has been forced to stop making arrests for crimes of genocide. The opening of provisional detention centres is being considered and an extension is being built at Gitarama. But the real cause of overcrowding - the inertia of judicial proceedings - shows no sign of resolution.

A year and a quarter after the start of the massacres, neither the international nor the Rwandan tribunal has completed a single genocide case due to a lack ofcash and logistical resources. Only a handful of detainees - many of them arrested on the evidence of a single witness - have had any access to legal representation.

raybec 4

11-25-2008, 02:38 PM

I really enjoy the "Locked up Abroad" series on the National Geographic Channel. The South American experience doesn't seem like it would be pleasant, Peru, Argentina, Nicaragua but it's the third world countries you don't hear stories from that would scare you. The Phillipines is one that if you've everbeen there you most definately would not want to get locked up there.

Munson

11-25-2008, 02:48 PM

Any country that ends in "stan."

Rain Man

11-25-2008, 02:57 PM

It seems to me that there are five factors that would affect the rankings.

1. To what extent are prison facilities maintained?
2. Is there an organized torture program?
3. Do the other prisoners like Americans or not?
4. How alien is the food and language?
5. Are the other prisoners bigger or smaller than you, on average?

Any other factors?

Hog's Gone Fishin

11-25-2008, 02:57 PM

The best place I would have to say is that secret prison in Switzerland that is run by the swedish bikini team. I hear you get 6 meals a day with midnight massages! All the prison guards are scantily clothed hot babes that demand your services at least three times daily. No one has ever escaped from this prison.

'Hamas' Jenkins

11-25-2008, 03:00 PM

It seems to me that there are five factors that would affect the rankings.

1. To what extent are prison facilities maintained?
2. Is there an organized torture program?
3. Do the other prisoners like Americans or not?
4. How alien is the food and language?
5. Are the other prisoners bigger or smaller than you, on average?

Any other factors?

Disease prevalence. Almost 1/3 of the adult population in Botswana is HIV+. You would literally be fighting for your life in a shower rape situation.

Hog's Gone Fishin

11-25-2008, 03:03 PM

Disease prevalence. Almost 1/3 of the adult population in Botswana is HIV+. You would literally be fighting for your life in a shower rape situation.

The best place I would have to say is that secret prison in Switzerland that is run by the swedish bikini team. I hear you get 6 meals a day with midnight massages! All the prison guards are scantily clothed hot babes that demand your services at least three times daily. No one has ever escaped from this prison.

Because no one has ever tried.

KCJohnny

11-25-2008, 05:18 PM

North Korea..

Hands down, North Korea.

Bwana

11-25-2008, 05:19 PM

Is there a good place to be tossed in the clink?

TrickyNicky

11-25-2008, 05:27 PM

Is there a good place to be tossed in the clink?

Sure. There are Prisons in Europe where some murderers are allowed to go on work release.

Bwana

11-25-2008, 05:30 PM

Sure. There are Prisons in Europe where some murderers are allowed to go on work release.

Hmmm, well that would be better than being tossed in jail in North Korea, or Rwanda.

KCJohnny

11-25-2008, 06:48 PM

North Korea is hell on earth (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/feb/01/northkorea):

'I witnessed a whole family being tested on suffocating gas and dying in the gas chamber,' he said. 'The parents, son and and a daughter. The parents were vomiting and dying, but till the very last moment they tried to save kids by doing mouth-to-mouth breathing.'

He explains how he had believed this treatment was justified. 'At the time I felt that they thoroughly deserved such a death. Because all of us were led to believe that all the bad things that were happening to North Korea were their fault; that we were poor, divided and not making progress as a country.

'It would be a total lie for me to say I feel sympathetic about the children dying such a painful death. Under the society and the regime I was in at the time, I only felt that they were the enemies. So I felt no sympathy or pity for them at all.'

His testimony is backed up by Soon Ok-lee, who was imprisoned for seven years. 'An officer ordered me to select 50 healthy female prisoners,' she said. 'One of the guards handed me a basket full of soaked cabbage, told me not to eat it but to give it to the 50 women. I gave them out and heard a scream from those who had eaten them. They were all screaming and vomiting blood. All who ate the cabbage leaves started violently vomiting blood and screaming with pain. It was hell. In less than 20 minutes they were quite dead.'

Most are imprisoned because their relatives are believed to be critical of the regime. Many are Christians, a religion believed by Kim Jong-il to be one of the greatest threats to his power. According to the dictator, not only is a suspected dissident arrested but also three generations of his family are imprisoned, to root out the bad blood and seed of dissent.

There may be more than 300,000 North Koreans in these hellish gulags. Most will be worked to death or starved to death. If you have the stomach for it here's what is really going (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1oUd89QvGo&feature=related)on in North Korea. WARNING: very disturbing content.

Rain Man

11-25-2008, 07:01 PM

Is there a good place to be tossed in the clink?

It's not prison, but there was an article in the paper here a few years back pondering whether Aspen had the nicest jail in the world. Apparently it's got great views between the bars.

I've always pondered the whole "administrative segregation" aspect of American prisons. It seems to me that I'd rather have a cell to myself than have a roomie. I've always wondered if there's not some sort of inadvertent incentive there to stab your cellmate.

On a side note, I saw one of those reality prison shows on Discovery or TLC or something, and they interviewed one dude who had something like 48 felony convictions .... WHILE IN PRISON.